


The truth of the lies we were living

by lbmisscharlie



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Secret Agent Angie, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 11:45:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3326198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbmisscharlie/pseuds/lbmisscharlie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The L&L Automat's got a long history with secret agents, and it's Angie's job to watch over them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The truth of the lies we were living

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks 100000 times to this fandom for being all about the femslash, and to [peninsulam](http://archiveofourown.org/users/peninsulam) for her speedy beta and relentless encouragement.

Her job is to smile. To refill drinks; to make change; to keep her eyes open and her mouth shut and the automat compartments full. Angie’s very good at her job.

The automat is never quite empty, always with a lonely soul lingering in the back, avoiding eye contact. That’s how she knows when someone’s new: the seasoned agents come in the rush, messages passed under a plate of steak and eggs, a reuben sandwich. Or split pea soup; the FBI guys love split pea. 

She likes the lulls, though. The guys in the kitchen take long smoke breaks, fragments of Italian drifting through the back alley door, propped open with a mop bucket, and she wipes down the countertop with long, even strokes. The sheen that blooms then fades under the rag in her hand pleases, its momentary gleam a shining promise.

The door opens, letting in a gust of cold air and the din of traffic. A downturned head, a dark fedora, a suit with lapels slightly too narrow under a coat a smidge too broad. The man fumbles his way into a booth in the corner, too nervous to remember to pick out a sandwich. Angie sighs.

The CIA really needs to work on training.

Picking up her coffee pot – decaf – Angie makes her way to the table. She plunks a mug down on the formica top, and she swears the man jumps a foot. “First time?” He looks up at her, skittish eyes alarmed, and she works to keep her smile the mild, inviting expression of a helpful waitress. “At an automat?” she adds, and swallows a laugh at the blatant relief which spreads over his face.

“It’s real easy, sugar.” She fishes a handful of nickels from her apron pocket, drops a couple on the table. These babies, fresh out of training; she can’t help it. “Choose what you want and drop those in the slot.” She tilts her forehead toward the back wall, its rows of small windows offering up a wealth of options. 

“Of course,” he says, but doesn’t scoop up the nickels. She nudges them forward with the edge of the mug, then fills it with coffee. 

“First one’s on me; you’ll get the hang of it.” As she walks away, she imagines his perplexed blink, the way he must be parsing her words right now, wondering if his first real mission is, in fact, another training exercise. By the time she gets back to the counter, though, he’s up at the wall, turning the knob for a slice of blueberry pie.

It’s the best dessert they have. Maybe he’ll do all right after all.

++

She makes a point of griping about the crates. She’s a waitress, after all, it shouldn’t be her job to help unload produce. But she does, baring her teeth at Salvatore when he tells her not to break a nail, and once the lettuce and radishes are safely away in the refrigerator, she slips the small yellow envelope from the bottom of the crate and tucks it into her apron pocket. 

Today it’s a single sheet of airmail paper with two columns of figures written in pencil. She doesn’t copy them out, but memorizes them, and slides the paper back into the envelope. A symbol on the envelope flap tells her it’s to go in the tuna salad sandwich compartment at precisely 11:45. 

They’re never sealed, so she’s always assumed they’re for her eyes as much as anyone else’s. 

++

She does have a favorite customer, all waitresses with regulars do. And it’s not just because he tips well. 

No, it’s the amused, grandfatherly smile he gives her when she asks him, every day, if he wouldn’t like a little pie to round out his meal. “What’s on offer?” he always asks, and she always tells him, even though for most customers she’d jerk her thumb back behind her, to the automat wall, and ask if they could read.

He does like the blueberry, but he’d argue a blue streak against her that their peach is the best. She serves him his slice and tops up his coffee and pretends not to notice the code he’s left in the _Times_ crossword. It might not even be real; he always pushes the paper toward her on the counter – “For the next bored old man” – and it’s always a different person who asks to pick it up later, for the sports or the weather. 

But then, she thinks he’s been at this spy business longer than she’s been alive.

++

The lunchtime rush is only made worse by the foul weather, customers cursing the rain as they shove through the door, popping closed umbrellas with sprays of wet rainwater. Angie has to yell at Nico, the owner’s nephew and general automat grunt, three times to mop the floor before someone breaks their neck in the muck. 

The woman at the end of the counter hasn’t come in before; that in itself isn’t unusual, the automat being an actual working restaurant in addition to being the favorite meeting place of the city’s secret agents. But though she’d surveyed the exits when she came in and angled herself on the stool so she has a vantage of most of the automat, the sandwich she’d grabbed was innocuous, unaccompanied by any of Angie’s produce deliveries, and sitting at the end of the bar she’s hardly in a good position to meet a contact. 

Striding down to the woman, Angie lifts the coffee pot. “Coffee?” No time for pleasantries; from the corner of her eye she can see the man she’s dubbed FBI Phil lifting his mug impatiently. 

“Yes, thank you, that would be lovely.” The woman has a warm voice, a carefully modulated English accent, and a full lower lip, red lipstick smudged a little from her sandwich. 

“Not Earl Grey, English?” Angie’s taunt comes out a bit more biting than she’d intended, as she pointedly ignores FBI Phil. 

But the woman merely arches one dark eyebrow. “Do you have Earl Grey?”

Angie laughs. “Nah.”

“I suppose I’ll need to make do with coffee, then,” she says, an amused tilt to the corner of her mouth. Instead of a mug, Angie pulls up a generous teacup with saucer, fills it, and slides it across the counter. The woman laughs, toasts Angie, and takes a sip of the coffee, black. 

Across the automat FBI Phil snaps his fingers. “Hey, waitress, some coffee!” Angie grits her teeth and the woman gives her a small, sympathetic shrug.

By the time Angie’s made the circuit back around to the counter, filling mugs and busing plates, the woman is gone, but she’s left a very good tip tucked under her saucer.

++

Her heels ache, just like other girls’ do, when she gets home, and she toes off her shoes to leave by the door and pads to the armchair to take off her stockings. She always means to pick up before she goes to bed, but somehow each morning starts with a frantic search for a balled-up stocking and a dismal glance at whatever new scuff she should have buffed out of the leather of her shoes. 

Digging the ball of her thumb into her arch, she groans. 

Marjorie’s voice drifts under the jam of her door, high and pained. She’s been at it every night this week, crying to her mom back in Kansas about the Big Bad City. 

(Well. It might be more nuanced than that; Angie knows Marjorie’s been dealing with some jerk at work with very free hands, but by the fourth night of tears she’d lost all sympathy.)

With a groan, Angie drags herself to the door to shove a towel in the gap. She puts the wireless on, very low, and soon enough the murmur of music has her humming while she strips out of her clothes, washes her face, and pins up her hair for the night.

++

English comes back two days later and sits at the end of the counter once more. She’s pushing tubes of penne around on her plate when Angie comes by with coffee. 

“Bad day, English?” she asks as she pours. Her hand shakes for just one, quickly recovered, moment when the woman looks up at her, wide, dark eyes unexpectedly soft and unguarded. Just as quickly, the woman composes her face into an expression of resigned weariness. 

“Office politics,” she says, laying her fork down. 

Angie hums encouragingly, setting down the coffee pot and leaning her elbows against the counter. Of the seven other people in the automat, four are real, innocuous patrons, one an MI-6 codebreaker picking up a set of encrypted messages and a ham on rye, another an aged NKGB agent killing time before a stakeout (three pieces of pie but one nursed coffee; liquids a bad idea before long periods of time stationary), and the last the NKGB’s FBI tail. Nothing Angie needs to keep an eye on.

“What’s the office?”

“Hm? Oh, the phone company.” SSR, then. No wonder she’s down; it’s as boy’s club as they come. 

“You wanna talk about it?” English wriggles her shoulders, starts to purse her lips and refuse. “C’mon, I’m dying here. You know I got coffee dumped on me this morning?” She leans away from the counter enough to lift her apron and show the stain running down the front of her skirt.

The woman’s eyes narrow. “Was it the man who snaps his fingers? Detestable habit.” She looks around, as if she can force the perpetrator out with a mere steely gaze. 

“Nah,” Angie says. “Out-of-towner. He won’t be coming back, anyway.” He’d tripped over his chair trying to get out after what she’d whispered in his ear.

“Good,” English says, sitting back. 

“So, your day? Any hot beverages poured on you?”

English does crack a smile at that. Her lipstick has flaked off at the corners of her mouth, and Angie feels sure she doesn’t let people see that very often. “Thankfully, no.” She picks at the white roll that came with her pasta, rolling tiny balls of dough. “Did you work during the war?” 

Angie nods. “Welding, in the shipyards. My mom, my cousins, we were all there.” At least until Angie’d been recruited.

“Do you miss it?”

She hasn’t thought about the shipyards in a long time. “It was hard work,” she says, and English nods. “But it felt more – well.” She gestures behind her with one hand. “I don’t even need to be here; this is an automat.” Her laugh, a sharp bark, is more bitter than intended. She can’t say it doesn’t get boring, sliding messages, keeping tabs on the agents who are actually out in the field, doing things. She’d been on missions, before. Just New York, Jersey, once down to Washington, but still.

“You pour a mean cup of coffee,” English says, mock consolation. 

“Well, glad to know my skills are appreciated.” She refills the cup with a flourish, and English laughs. “You feelin’ less than necessary at the phone company, then?”

“I worked with the military during the war,” she says, clearly with some circumspection. Angie doesn’t push. “Now I file paperwork.”

“Is it exciting paperwork at least?”

“Utterly dull,” English says with a wry twist of her lip. Angie, on some strange, unexpected impulse, reaches out and cups her hand around the other woman’s. It’s dry, the fingertips warmed by the coffee cup, and at the gesture English looks up at her, lips parted slightly. 

“Thanks. Angie.” English’s smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes, but is warm nonetheless, and she doesn’t pull her hand away until Angie does.

“No problem, English,” Angie says, with enough emphasis on the nickname that the woman’s smile does widen, just a bit, for a moment.

“Peggy,” she says. “Carter.” Angie’s certain she can’t stop the surprised little flick of her eyebrows, but Peggy’s looking down at her hands as she says it. Angie’s almost annoyed at herself, for not putting it together earlier: the rumors that Captain America’s Agent Carter had stayed on in America pointing, like buzzing neon, to the woman in front of her, with the English accent and SSR job.

“Great to meet you, Peggy.” She pats her hand once more, an attempt to reassure, but the movement comes out awkward and nervous, now. She busies herself by picking the coffee pot back up, turning to refill it, and by the time she’s moving to make her rounds through the automat, Peggy’s pushed her plate away and is standing, fixing her skirt.

She nods to Angie as she leaves, and Angie’s mouth feels dry.

++

She pulls out the bottom drawer of her dresser and gropes around the back, finding the gin bottle. The girls are responsible for keeping up their own rooms, but Marion can be snoopy at times. She probably won’t throw Angie out if she finds the gin; the gun hidden in her box-spring, though, would prove a little trickier.

She doesn’t have soda, so she drinks the gin with a splash of water from the tap – mostly vile, but she only pours a few mouthfuls, just enough to dull the strange edge of anxiety buzzing through her.

Leaving the glass next to the sink, she unbuttons her dress and drops it to the floor. Slip, brassiere, garter belt all get piled on the armchair, and, picking up her glass, she settles onto her bed, duvet wrapped around her naked shoulders, and picks up her book. Daphne du Maurier’s latest, historical family drama, broken engagements, secret rooms, treason, and rebellion. 

She reads a few pages, taking nothing in, then drops the book to the floor. Her mind comes back to Peggy.

Peggy Carter. Who flew with Captain America, who served in the SAS, who could drop a man as soon as look at him. She’s not sure what she feels at this revelation: annoyance that she hadn’t put it together, certainly; satisfaction at being proved right that there was something interesting under that cool English exterior, perhaps. 

Under the duvet, her skin prickles. She draws her knees up to her chest, cool bare skin against her breasts. Her fingers trail absently up and down her skin, against the prickle of hair left unshaven for days, as she thinks of Peggy, sat across from her at the counter. The way she leans forward, forearms tucked under her breasts, the way she smiles at Angie, like they share a secret.

They could, she thinks abruptly. If Peggy knows, if she was directed to the Automat by her superiors, she might already know. The thought flashes over Angie’s mind, but is just as quickly dismissed. Peggy’s too cautious around Angie; if she thought of Angie as a potential ally, she’d have made some sign already, established a rapport. 

Angie wonders if Peggy’s meetings at the Automat are entirely authorized by the SSR; then she wonders what orders her own superiors might send down if they suspected something similar. 

She grits her teeth together, shoves that thought somewhere in the back recesses of her mind. Her fingertips curl against the narrow bone of her shin, then release. Breath in, breath out, air skittering damply over her knees. When her chest rises, her thighs press against her nipples, tight and goose-pimpled. 

Would those smiles stop, she wonders, if Peggy knew the truth? Or would they get wider, full of all that they know together? Angie wonders what else makes Peggy smile: a hand clasping hers, fingers drifting up her spine, a kiss to her temple? She shouldn’t think of her that way, she knows, but what’s one more secret among the many she holds close to her chest? Messages and memories and scars, touches she wishes she could still feel against her and others she’d give anything to forget. What she needs, what she wants: it’s not new, not really, but she hasn’t felt it in a while. 

She lets her knees fall open, a little, brings one hand to tuck between her thigh and her chest, to stroke over her nipple. Peggy’s mouth, she thinks, and the movement of her ass underneath her tight skirts. Angie’s hand slips down her thigh. 

The way she crosses her legs at the knee when she’s relaxed, the improper little swing of her ankle – Angie’s fingers stroke over her panties – the flutter of her lashes against her cheeks and the way her eyebrows arch in surprise. Would she kiss harshly, hungry with the hard edge of her teeth sharp on Angie’s lip? Would her eyes widen like that when Angie tangled her fingers in her hair and held her between her legs?

Her fingertips slip under the waistband of her panties, between her legs. Her hair is damp, tangled with the sweat of the day, and underneath she’s slick already. Up and over her clit, fingertips soft and teasing. How strong are Peggy’s hands, she wonders, what muscles shift under the taut curves of her hips? Would Peggy pin her down, she wonders – fingertips pressing, rubbing – pin Angie’s narrow hips between her soft thighs – sliding inside her, thumb rocking – lips against hers until she can’t breathe, can’t think – hand gripped tight on her tit, pressing hard on her nipple – thrusting – slipping, harsh, hot – 

The crest of her orgasm throws her forward, panting hard and curled in on herself, cunt throbbing around her fingers. All is wet and hot, sweat between her breasts and her palm sticky. Sliding her hand from between her thighs, she wipes it against the sheet, spreads her legs and rubs her foot against her calf. She should put on pajamas; if Marion knocks on her door for some reason, she’ll be scandalized to see Angie answer the door in a hastily-tied robe. Instead, she pulls the duvet tighter around her shoulders and rolls onto her side.

++

Peggy arrives when Angie’s in the back, and Angie swears there’s something kind of guilty in the way she tilts her head down to take a bite of her egg and tomato sandwich.

“Change of scenery, English?” Angie says as she pours her coffee. When Peggy looks up, her cheeks are pink.

Angie bites her lip, doesn’t look away. When Peggy’s sitting at the counter, they’re just about the same height; when Angie leans in on her elbows it’s like they build up their own world, tight and compact. Here in the booth, Peggy’s gaze meets hers under a fan of dark lashes, looking up at her rather than catching her eye straight-on, and Angie gets a little lost in the way her mouth looks from above.

“Yes, well. Trying something new,” Peggy offers, somewhat weakly. Angie lets her eyebrows speak her skepticism, but she lets Peggy be.

Of course, it makes sense once he arrives. Back-to-back and murmuring from the corners of their mouths; it’s sweet, really, that Peggy thinks this is stealthy. 

In any other café, their awkward assignation would read as an illicit lover’s tryst, the way they don’t quite lean into each other, the lingering words they don’t quite speak. Here, though, his sudden appearance means it’s business and his ill-at-ease posture means he’s not an agent. Or a bad one.  
That damned CIA, Angie thinks. The man stands, pausing next to Peggy’s shoulder for a moment, and Angie thinks again. No, he’s not an agent, he’s terrified and hiding it. Fairly well to most, probably, but by the way Peggy’s gaze follows him to the door, she’s not convinced.

Angie grabs a piece of chocolate cake from the automat and strides over. She slides it across the table to Peggy, who tilts her chin up, raises her eyebrows. When she does that, the corners of her mouth tighten and release, neat little furrows appearing in her forehead. “Try something new, English,” Angie says, and doesn’t say that it’s for the worried stare that followed Peggy’s man out the door, for the way Peggy’s hand still grips tight to the edge of the tabletop. 

“You back to work after this?”

“I’m afraid so,” Peggy says. Her gripping hand unfolds, takes up a fork. Her mouth closing around a bite of chocolate cake sends skittish little chills down Angie’s back. When Peggy looks up at her again, her lashes flutter once, a slow blink, and her mouth parts with a soft, wet sound.  
Angie’s grip on the coffee pot tightens. She refills Peggy’s cup. “Don’t work too hard.”

++

The man returns a few times. Unlike Peggy, he does take tea; also unlike her, he often leaves his meal half-finished.

Not everyone has the stomach for spycraft, after all.

Still, the man moves with more confidence every day. And he always tips generously, so Angie tells herself she has no cause to feel annoyance at the way Peggy’s eyes follow him, worried and guarded, as he leaves the automat after their meetings. 

++

Sometimes the Griffith, and her tiny apartment – cozy, she tells herself, intimate – is too much, and after work she’ll find herself other places to be. 

Peggy drops by the automat after getting out of the office, long enough for a cup of coffee, a slice of pie, and some significant shared glances with Angie over the couple near-on necking in the back booth. Angie’s been thinking about kicking them out, but instead contents herself with pointedly interrupting with coffee refills every quarter hour or so. She likes the way Peggy’s eyebrows arch up when she saunters back after “accidentally” bumping into the boy as she leaned across the table to bus a plate. He’d nearly fallen out of the booth.

She gulps down the last swig of coffee and pushes her cup across the counter to Angie, smiling and dashing out the door to swing into a car with her contact. The rim of the cup is stained with red. Angie rolls it back and forth in her hands as she watches Peggy leave, letting the remaining warmth suffuse her palms. 

Clocking out, she wraps her scarf twice around her neck and struggles into her coat, shoulders stiff after a long day. She slips into her galoshes, tugging the backs up over her heels, and buttons her collar tight. Outside, the sidewalks shine wet-slick from the dull drizzle coming down all day; not enough for an umbrella, but just insistent enough to leave her hair frizzled and her cheeks and temples damp.

She thinks of seeing a flick, taking in Lauren Bacall’s sly-eyed charm and controlled, forceful voice in _The Big Sleep._ Wandering to the cinema, she buys a ticket and gets as far as standing in the lobby, folding her collar down and shaking out her hair, when she changes her mind. It’s only that she can’t stomach the theatrics of Hollywood detective work after a long day passaging messages and clearing plates; nothing to do with the rise of Bacall’s cheekbones and the fullness of her lower lip striking something in her gut.

Instead she wanders. She could go to mass, she thinks. The pull of old mother church hasn’t left her, even though she only goes on the odd weekend she’s home at her mother’s. Confession, well, she hasn’t sat behind the curtain since the start of the war. Is it a sin to lie to everyone you know? If so, she doesn’t feel very contrite.

The rest, well.

A drink, maybe; but drinking alone only makes her think of who she’d like to be drinking with, and she doesn’t have the energy to talk to anyone else. It’s different these days, since the end of the war, too many men and too many judgments. Like she’s supposed to be back home now, now that she’s not needed in the factory.

She won’t, she thinks, and turns heel back to the Griffith. She’ll take the long way, for some air.

++

Marjorie gives her a tearful goodbye, train ticket to Topeka crushed in one hand and hatbox in the other. Angie pats her back gingerly, tells her to write, then straightens her uniform.

That evening, Peggy is circling ads for apartments for rent, and though it likely breaks all sorts of agency rules, Angie tells her about the vacancy at the Griffith.

Peggy evades; she’s clearly a more conscientious agent than Angie, but Angie already suspected that. Despite Peggy’s excuses, Angie finds she wants to keep her close, somehow. She tells herself it’s only friendly concern.

Peggy’s back the next evening. Well, not precisely; she’s waiting on the curb outside the automat. It’s the end of the day and her suit is still neatly pressed, her lapels sharp, their curve echoing the rise of her breast. Angie’s got a mean tomato soup stain down one side and smells like tuna fish.

Her best quality is her persistence, though, so she knocks on the window and holds up the Griffith’s ad.

“The only thing that could possibly make it better is if you lived next to me. Oops, you would. 3C if you need a cup of sugar.” Angie tilts her head and smiles. Winningly, of course.

Peggy’s eyes go a little wide and she takes a deep breath before passing the advertisement back. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t make a very good neighbor,” she says, as she rushes off, but Angie holds that little moment of hesitation close.

++

Angie offers to help Peggy move in, but Peggy says she can easily carry all she has. It’s true; when Angie comes by that evening, the room holds Peggy, two suitcases, a hatbox and a train case, and nothing else but the furnishings provided.

“You travel light, English.”

“I haven’t found somewhere to settle, yet,” Peggy says, brushing her hand across the vanity sink. When she looks up, her eyes catch Angie’s in the mirror. “I’m glad to be here, though.” 

Angie feels a deep heat rush up to spread through her chest. “Glad to have ya,” she says, and holds her gaze until Peggy turns away.

++

She frowns at the envelope, rubs the marking on the flap. She knows it from training, sure, but it’s never shown up before. Usually the produce delivery only includes missives to be slipped into an automat compartment or under a napkin, with her as the go-between, but this one is for her. 

With slight trepidation, she flexes the envelope open, dropping its contents into her palm. A small photograph.

It’s blurry around the edges, the figure in motion, but the wry, full mouth and the cant of those eyebrows are unmistakable. In the image, Peggy looks just out of the frame, hair sweeping over one shoulder. It must be wartime; the collar and tie fastened tight under her chin look distinctly military. Something sickening settles in her gut as her fingers toy with the edge of the photograph. 

She knows what happens when agents get in too deep. Not that she is, but – She looks at the photograph closer, at Peggy’s shadowed eyes, squinting against the sun and tired. It must have been taken shortly after Captain America died. Angie’s suddenly very glad she didn’t know Peggy then, didn’t know her through that grief.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, she flips the photograph over to see her instructions. Her fingers nearly fumble the photograph out of relief when she sees _Help her._ Her lungs feel very full and the tense little nerves running under her skin very, very sharp.

++

She changes out of her uniform, leaving it tossed over her chair, and wraps her robe around her, tight. There’s still a bottle of gin in the back of her drawer; they’ve no fresh limes, but Peggy keeps tonic, which is good enough. 

She knocks, grinning when Peggy opens the door. “Hey, English,” she says. “Tell me about your day.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Adrienne Rich's "When We Dead Awaken"
> 
> Here in the matrix of need and anger, the  
> disproof of what we thought possible  
> failures of medications  
> doubts of another's existence  
> \--tell it over and over, the words  
> get thick with unmeaning --  
> yet never have we been close to the **the truth**  
>  **of the lies we were living** , listen to me:


End file.
